So how fast is Google Fiber? Really fast... and it may be far ahead of its time.

That said, I can’t say that I noticed a significant difference in terms of my day-to-day use of the Internet. Even the people in the Kansas City Startup Village (KCSV)—a small strip on the edge of Kansas City, Kansas that was among the first homes to have Google’s gigabit connection—agreed with me.

“Right now, we don’t do anything that requires fast Internet,” admitted Adam Arredondo of LocalRuckus, a new local startup, when I stopped by to learn about their experience.

As many Ars commenters have noted, the rest of the Internet is still really slow in comparison to a gigabit home broadband pipe; there are many other obstacles getting in the way of a full-bore Internet experience. After all, once my Web request leaves the fiber-connected house, makes its way out of the city, and starts talking to the rest of the Internet, there are all kinds of routers, switches, boxes, firewalls, and quality of service (traffic shaping) issues that make it so I can’t actually download an album from iTunes in the blink of an eye.

But my brief taste of what promised to be the craziest, fastest Internet for the lowest amount of money may not have been enough. I may have to stay longer next time to really appreciate it.

Another guy in the same work house as Arredondo, Andy Kallenbach (also known as Ars reader “Andreas_kc”) of FormZapper, said that what he really notices is the high upload speed.

“The best connections that I get personally are to several of our servers colocated in downtown [Kansas City],” he wrote in a comments thread, echoing what he told me in person. “It is just as good as walking into the data center and jacking in. Our nightly deployments take around 10 seconds now. [The only] bottleneck now being somewhat drive speed.”

Other Ars readers have suggested that I’d really start to appreciate it once I spent more time with the connection. Malor, who has a 250MB connection in Chattanooga, commented:

“This is something you need to live with, as opposed to just experience briefly, to start to understand how it matters. The biggest thing is that you never, ever have to think about what you are doing with your connection. It doesn't matter. No matter how crowded either direction is, with that kind of packet throughput, you don't really get latency issues. You don't have the problems with cable modems of saturating the upload link and then seeing your download link hosed. At least, I don't think you ever have that problem; I've never been able to completely saturate my upload, even when it was merely 100Mbps.”

Still, I would definitely throw down $70 a month for a 1Gbps connection, happily tossing aside the $30 basic Internet package (20Mbps) that I get from Comcast in Oakland. I think we can all agree that most Americans would definitely enjoy even a small speed bump on the order of 50Mbps to 100Mbps for around the same price as they’re paying now.

“We have a lot to do in Kansas City”

Enlarge/ Google fiber technician Ben Estes worked on the Hacker Home connection on Wednesday.

Cyrus Farivar

When I first arrived on Tuesday afternoon, I ran a test on Google’s own speed test page and got 460Mbps down. The two denizens of the Hacker Home (Mike Demarais and Andrew Evans) told me that such speeds were slow—I ran countless tests, ranging from BitTorrent, to multiple Hulu and YouTube streams, to traceroutes. I ran the tests provided by SpeedTest.net and Google fiber speed tool. But there wasn’t anything that could really, adequately test what such high speeds mean beyond clicking Google’s little “begin test” button.

Many commenters suggested things that I couldn’t do, like run a server. (Google’s terms of service forbid that.) Accessing Usenet proved a bit difficult, as I didn’t want to go to the trouble of setting up a new account and paying for it. I also tried running a Tor bridge relay—but even then my connection only tended to hit around 23.5KBps, far lower than what I would have expected. Later on Wednesday, Kallenbach helped me use Go2PC between two machines in different fiber-enabled houses to send a Linux ISO, and that only topped out at about 2MB per second.

The only real test that I could do on a single machine with minimal hassle was to run a script written by Ars’ own Lee Aylward that downloads an Ubuntu ISO from all US-based mirrors (45, in total) at once. When I ran that, I got the best performance I had so far—a whopping 50MB per second—but still far short of what Google should be serving me.

Another thing to keep in mind is that running Fiber over WiFi, of course, slows down the connection noticeably. Google techs who came to visit the Hacker Home Wednesday (we’ll get to that later) told me that they regularly see Wi-Fi speeds of around 100Mbps compared to wired speeds of around 800Mbps.

Other readers asked about the Google fiber service (a $120 package) with TV option (the basic option the house has is only $70 a month). The Hacker Home doesn’t have a TV and doesn’t have that option, so unfortunately I couldn’t test it. In fact, what may be a better test than the one I ran would be to record a bunch of TV shows and then run some of these higher-bandwidth and lower-latency tests (games, Skype calls) simultaneously across multiple machines to see how that stresses network performance.

Ben Estes, a local Google fiber technician who was over at the house Wednesday, estimated that “over half” of the approximately 300 homes in Kansas City, Kansas that have the gigabit installed already have gone for the $120-per-month TV option.

He and his colleague Brett Neal came to the Hacker Home to check out why our gigabit connection had fallen to about 40Mbps. After over an hour of inspections, he determined that the electrical power to the house wasn't sufficient and that once he replaced the fiber jack in the house, everything should be fine. (The Hacker Home hadn't been lived in in about two years, and had some issues with not being able to feed enough power to its new residents and all their devices, including the Google Fiber box. An electrician working at the house that same day expanded its capacity from 40 amps to 200 amps.) By the time Estes and Neal left, they were pulling down 900Mbps-plus speeds. Later Wednesday evening my tests were still resulting in speeds in the neighborhood of 400Mbps.

“Right now there’s only six of us [technicians],” he said, noting that he and his girlfriend were considering moving to this neighborhood just to get fiber access. “By six months, we should be over 100 [technicians]. We have a lot to do in Kansas City.”

Your speed is determined by the other end when you know you don't have a bottleneck on your end. That fiber only allows YOU to do more things at the same time since you have a bigger pipe to use. I went from Comcast crap to Verizon FiOS and noticed a slightly faster connection over all but when I noticed more was the ability to have more bandwidth hungry things running at the same time and still run fast. People have this misconception that a 300Mbps connection is 'faster' than the basic 15-30Mbps cable broadband connection you get. It really isn't.

Neat. Remind me to check back when it's relevant for the 99.9% of the rest of the country. As a dweller in the heart of what used to be BellSouth turf, I'm betting it a cold day in hell before regional monopolies let ANY competition in the door. AT&T still thinks 12-24 mbps's a Big Deal. Comcast's a little better at 50-100. Both will happily traffic shape or quota said service offerings into irrelevance rather than allow it to actually be used.

Oh and just to be a crotchety old man about a pet peeve.... it's "Internet access", not "Internet" that people are signing up for. Seeing this terminology slump down common denominators in all the advertising from Internet Service Providers is bad enough... but Ars should be better about this.

I can see how trying to justify these speeds as a single person might be tough, but in a household of multiple users all tapped into the internet, this sounds pretty amazing. Not that I have a super fast connection (50mbps), but even with 2 of us in the house, if I'm playing a game online and the SO is watching Netflix in the other room, it causes a lot of issues. Add in a household with 2-3 tween-teenaged kids, I can see where these speeds would start to really pay off.

Well, the mobile network wasn't ready for the iPhone either, but one pulled the other. It might well happen here too, and it might well be part of Google's goals.

For one thing, you might start favoring sites where the improved bandwidth makes a difference. Something like that is happening with sites since Apple introduced the retina display: those with high resolution icons and such have a small advantage, and that's pushing others in the same direction.

Of course, the fundamental distinction is the number of users. In my mind, it's not a matter of when this might make a difference, but what's the point of critical mass.

After doing my windows 8 install and installing my not insignificant steam library, my somewhat significant amazon library, and my significant technet library, I must say that I find these comments about Gigabit speeds being ahead of its time as somewhat incorrect; It is simply that the rest of the internet is behind the times.

I can see how trying to justify these speeds as a single person might be tough, but in a household of multiple users all tapped into the internet, this sounds pretty amazing. Not that I have a super fast connection (50mbps), but even with 2 of us in the house, if I'm playing a game online and the SO is watching Netflix in the other room, it causes a lot of issues. Add in a household with 2-3 tween-teenaged kids, I can see where these speeds would start to really pay off.

After doing my windows 8 install and installing my not insignificant steam library, my somewhat significant amazon library, and my significant technet library, I must say that I find these comments about Gigabit speeds being ahead of its time as somewhat incorrect; It is simply that the rest of the internet is behind the times.

God I wish I had gigabit internet speeds for that.

It is ahead of its time because the networks need to be upgraded. Even if you had a GB connection you wouldn't see any real increase in speed. All you would see is the ability to do more at the same time on your pipe w/o significant slowdown.

Our telecoms are perhaps the biggest problem; get taxpayer subsidies, but they never delivered on their promised. I am not saying that they should be a charity, after they are a business, but when a firm takes taxpayer money and says that they are going to do something and don't - it really makes me wonder if this is the way things should be.

Here in North America, we have costly telecom bills and slower internet speeds. (Admittedly, LTE rollout has been better here than many places, but then I would like to know in 5 years, would we still lead? If the Internet is any historical precedent, we won't. And we will overpay for an inferior service (wireless and internet bills here are higher).

What would I do if I could change the system? IMO, it's getting clear that the Internet is like a utility. There is a natural monopoly. It should be probably be a state or quasi-state company. Infrastructure upgrades would be more frequent compared to other types of utilities. Rates to us would probably be based on a percentage of these costs (like in utilities).

There are other consequences for having overpriced, inferior telecom infrastructure dominated by a few powerful oligopolies. For one, will North America be such an attractive place to start a business needing high bandwidth? ON that note, who knows what opportunities may arise from having a good infrastructure? Will North America be a good place for things like a data center? At a time when the US is considered declining such things seem likely to accelerate the decline.

After doing my windows 8 install and installing my not insignificant steam library, my somewhat significant amazon library, and my significant technet library, I must say that I find these comments about Gigabit speeds being ahead of its time as somewhat incorrect; It is simply that the rest of the internet is behind the times.

God I wish I had gigabit internet speeds for that.

It is ahead of its time because the networks need to be upgraded. Even if you had a GB connection you wouldn't see any real increase in speed. All you would see is the ability to do more at the same time on your pipe w/o significant slowdown.

Incorrect. I upgraded to 25Mbit for the windows 8 installation occasion and it helped out a lot. Given the companies I was downloading from, I have little doubt that at GB speeds they would at least be able to get me 50Mbit.

Malor is quite correct in the description of the municipal fiber experience in Chattanooga. I originally purchased the mid 30/30Mbps package when they first lit up. Since then as EPB realized just how much bandwidth they had they upgraded me at no charge to 50/50Mbps and bumped it again recently to 100/100Mbps (again at no cost). While downloads are markedly faster, the rest of the net simply isn't modeled to handle personal speeds like that and it bottlenecks in the outside world. Downloading is really only the tip of the iceberg though.

I can (and do) operate a server from my house with a registered domain name. I host my music and video files, media content for the family, operate webcams, all of which I can pick up and stream anywhere. If I'm at a friends house we want to watch a movie, I can stream HD from my house to his/hers and catch one of my flicks realtime. There is no caching. There is no lag. If I wanted to share my line with the neighbors to help them out on bills, I could (but, don't) and never feel any bandwidth constraints. Oh, and there is absolutely no need to set QOS (quality of service) rules on the router anymore. Pointless.

I've also my own cloud service to sync some really important files to various computers I use at both work and home. It's running off my box so I've no fees to pay and space restrictions are my call. It really is a slick user experience when one has more bandwidth than the internet can provide, for then you can explore tonnes of other uses for it. Bandwidth is not something I think about anymore. It's just there, it's just a citywide fat pipe. It's f'ing awesome.

Heck, I have much lower speeds than the article here with Verizon FiOS (50/25), and even with this the bottleneck is almost always on the other side of the link. I have managed to cap it out a couple of times (Steam downloads), but for the most part I see no advantage in upgrading to anything faster in the near future.

Our telecoms are perhaps the biggest problem; get taxpayer subsidies, but they never delivered on their promised. I am not saying that they should be a charity, after they are a business, but when a firm takes taxpayer money and says that they are going to do something and don't - it really makes me wonder if this is the way things should be.

Here in North America, we have costly telecom bills and slower internet speeds. (Admittedly, LTE rollout has been better here than many places, but then I would like to know in 5 years, would we still lead? If the Internet is any historical precedent, we won't. And we will overpay for an inferior service (wireless and internet bills here are higher).

What would I do if I could change the system? IMO, it's getting clear that the Internet is like a utility. There is a natural monopoly. It should be probably be a state or quasi-state company. Infrastructure upgrades would be more frequent compared to other types of utilities. Rates to us would probably be based on a percentage of these costs (like in utilities).

There are other consequences for having overpriced, inferior telecom infrastructure dominated by a few powerful oligopolies. For one, will North America be such an attractive place to start a business needing high bandwidth? ON that note, who knows what opportunities may arise from having a good infrastructure? Will North America be a good place for things like a data center? At a time when the US is considered declining such things seem likely to accelerate the decline.

It's more than a pity. It's criminal. Literally. You may want to check these out:

The telecom industry was given over $200 billion of tax payer money to do the needed upgrades to their networks to allow US broadband users to enjoy internet connections similar to those in countries like Japan. Upgrades they complained were prohibitively expensive to pay for on their own. What did these scumbags do with that money? Nothing. They pocketed it all and no questions were ever asked. No investigations nothing. These people committed fraud and theft.

Many commenters suggested things that I couldn’t do, like run a server. (Google’s terms of service forbid that.)

Well, that takes the shine off it, making it just like every other provider out there. If you can't run a server (assuming you aren't a complete idiot at security), having a fast upload really doesn't matter too much once you are beyond 5Mb/s, unless you are trying to upload your BR rips, err I mean your hi-def home movies

I unfortunately live in a town in Florida where I have very basic "High Speed" options. We are not rural, have Verizon LTE and Cox service in the adjoining town. The town government owns and operates the cable system and offers "Up to 3 Mbps" internet for $45 per month plus a $15 fee if you don't have cable TV. The next option is CenturyLink DSL at 4 Mbps down/768k up for $45 per month which you have to sign a 1 year contract to get that level of service. Just a few streets over you can get Cox cable internet for $54 per month for a consistent 18-20 Mbps because then you are in another township.

I have DSL and thankfully it is just enough to pull down HD streams in Netflix but so much as browsing on another device or watching a YouTube video at the same time causes Netflix to lower the quality to keep the stream going. I have an ATT iPhone 4S and I can usually match or exceed my DSL's connection when I compare them using the speed test app inside my house on regular old 3G/"4G" in everything including Ping. My neighbor who has Verizon LTE will be about 3-4x faster than his home connection. You all who are blessed with great internet should cherish it for some of your comrades aren't so lucky.

I'm curious what this will mean for the future of web development standards. For a long time, the only thing that keeps those writing web pages "honest" and makes them write efficient coding is bandwidth constraints. If you have gigabit fiber, it would almost be like loading content from your HDD. We shall see.

So Google's real motive for the Google Fiber project was to allow entrepreneurs and startups to flourish here, right? How exactly is that supposed to happen if they have a ban on running servers in their Terms of Service? I mean, building a new software platform or service is one thing but the current Terms of Service make it sound as if Google Fiber is only great for consuming things at the moment and perhaps telecommuting. If it's really supposed to be meant as a platform for encouraging the "next great thing" in terms of the Internet or software or whatever, I think the need to allow servers is pretty obvious.

I'm curious what this will mean for the future of web development standards. For a long time, the only thing that keeps those writing web pages "honest" and makes them write efficient coding is bandwidth constraints. If you have gigabit fiber, it would almost be like loading content from your HDD. We shall see.

Any software or web developer worth a darn will always strive for the fastest and most efficient method possible so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

I'm curious what this will mean for the future of web development standards. For a long time, the only thing that keeps those writing web pages "honest" and makes them write efficient coding is bandwidth constraints. If you have gigabit fiber, it would almost be like loading content from your HDD. We shall see.

As these speeds increase, buffer bloat on each individual machine and the home router will be an increasing problem. It might even move the bottle neck to some distant router, making these problems harder to resolve!!

Is not surprising that simultaneous users might have less than optimal performance.

God this is kind of depressing. I'm paying 27 a month for 1.5 and the only reason it isn't more is because I signed up for a two year contract a few years ago. They have all these deals but you end up signing up for a bunch of other things and when it's said and done it's closer to 70. meh.

People who moved there for Fiber must have at least employed a basic idea of upgrading their consumer sh*t routers to custom ones running several stacked NIC's and enterprise switches. Quite stupid to think your netgear will support it without bottle necking it.

I'm curious what this will mean for the future of web development standards. For a long time, the only thing that keeps those writing web pages "honest" and makes them write efficient coding is bandwidth constraints. If you have gigabit fiber, it would almost be like loading content from your HDD. We shall see.

It won't mean anything. Devs who care about how much time their pages take to load will continue to do so, devs who don't will continue to test over a LAN and say "our site loads fine".

Our telecoms are perhaps the biggest problem; get taxpayer subsidies, but they never delivered on their promised. I am not saying that they should be a charity, after they are a business, but when a firm takes taxpayer money and says that they are going to do something and don't - it really makes me wonder if this is the way things should be.

Here in North America, we have costly telecom bills and slower internet speeds. (Admittedly, LTE rollout has been better here than many places, but then

I would like to know in 5 years, would we still lead? If the Internet is any historical precedent, we won't. And we will overpay for an inferior service (wireless and internet bills here are higher).

What would I do if I could change the system? IMO, it's getting clear that the Internet is like a utility. There is a natural monopoly. It should be probably be a state or quasi-state company. Infrastructure upgrades would be more frequent compared to other types of utilities. Rates to us would probably be based on a percentage of these costs (like in utilities).

There are other consequences for having overpriced, inferior telecom infrastructure dominated by a few powerful oligopolies. For one, will North America be such an attractive place to start a business needing high bandwidth? ON that note, who knows what opportunities may arise from having a good infrastructure? Will North America be a good place for things like a data center? At a time when the US is considered declining such things seem likely to accelerate the decline.

It's more than a pity. It's criminal. Literally. You may want to check these out:

The telecom industry was given over $200 billion of tax payer money to do the needed upgrades to their networks to allow US broadband users to enjoy internet connections similar to those in countries like Japan. Upgrades they complained were prohibitively expensive to pay for on their own. What did these scumbags do with that money? Nothing. They pocketed it all and no questions were ever asked. No investigations nothing. These people committed fraud and theft.